Archives For Julius Caesar

Act III in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is known for the funeral speeches given by the characters of Brutus and Marc Anthony. The speeches are so notable that this year, to teach argument and rhetorical devices, we added the play to begin the American Literature unit.

He appeals to the crowd’s logos as he argues, “Would you rather that Caesar be alive and you be slaves?”

And he appeals to the crowd’s pathos as he states, “I did love Caesar, but I loved Rome more.”

Soon after, Marc Anthony takes the stage, and he appeals to the crowd’s ethos with his opening line, “Friends, Romans and countrymen…”

Not only does he show the crowd that he is “one of them” (common person) but he starts his speech in a memorable pattern, an example of the “rule of 3s” in speech.

Antony appeals to the crowd’s logos by offering “proof” that Caesar was a war hero, who “thrice refused the crown.”

In a final bow to the crowd’s pathos, Antony shows his own emotion, saying:

Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
(3.2.115–117)

Antony’s repeated use of thephrase ”but Brutus is an honorable man” cleverly implies an opposite meaning, stated just before he shows the people Caesar’s bloody corpse and connects the stab marks with conspirators.

Shakespeare’s Act III scene ii’s “speech-off” ends with a fired-up rabble of Romans ready to riot, as the blunt honesty of Brutus’s prose is upended by the poetic craftiness of Marc Anthony’s rhetorical style.

1700 years later, the context for comparing and contrasting the McCain eulogies could not be more different. These speeches, given in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., were not part of a political contest but given as a tribute to an American icon, Senator John McCain, when a malignant brain tumor caused his death on August 25, 2018.

McCain was a Vietnam War hero who twice lost a chance to be President of the United States. He lost the 2000 Republican presidential nomination to George W. Bush, who then won the White House. He lost the 2008 presidential race, running as a Republican against the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama.

The only similarities between the eulogies for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to the larger-than-life McCain is that both that both sets of speeches have excellent examples of rhetorical elements and both sets of speeches were publically delivered in the same venue by political rivals.

It was McCain’s rivals, former presidents, Barack Obama (Democrat) and George W. Bush (Republican), who addressed a crowd gathered at his funeral on September 1, 2018.

The transcripts of these speeches are available on numerous websites including the CBS News website or the NYTimes website along with videos of the speeches (Obama 19:26 and Bush 7:53).

These videos and transcripts can give teachers an opportunity to have students analyze the speeches for the elements from the rhetorical triangle that these politicians used in paying tribute to an American icon.

For example, students may note how Obama, who spoke first, described McCain by using the rule of thirds, “a warrior, a statesman, a patriot.”

They can call attention to Obama’s appeal to ethos, as he explained how McCain authorized him to speak at this occasion.

“So for someone like John to ask you, while he’s still alive, to stand and speak of him when he’s gone, is a precious and singular honor.”

And they may note how Obama used an antithesis in his tribute saying,

“It’s not based on where our parents or grandparents came from, or how recently they arrived, but on adherence to a common creed: That all of us are created equal.”

Then, in Bush’s speech, students may notice an appeal to ethos,

“He [McCain] was honest, no matter whom it offended. Presidents were not spared.”

They may notice Bush also used repetition stating:

“If we are ever tempted to forget who we are, to grow weary of our cause, John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder: We are better than this. America is better than this.”

Or Bush’s use of a rhetorical question, “Where did such strength of conviction come from?”

Giving students copies of the transcripts of these speeches lets them find the evidence where the speaker:

uses an emotional appeal?-pathos

uses an appeal to reason?-logos

establishes his credibility?-ethos

uses a rhetorical question?

uses humor?

uses repetition?

uses antithesis?

After finding the evidence, students could be asked to analyze each eulogy, before judging how well Obama and Bush used the elements of ethos, logos, and pathos.

In this example, students go as far back to the definitions of Aristotle and the examples of Shakespeare to study rhetoric. Then they can go back and analyze the speeches of two former Presidents of the United States of America.

But even the best of these literary tributes to John McCain fall short. History has already portrayed him as a man who only spoke “right on”, and one who let his actions speak louder than any rhetoric used to define him.

The investigation was initiated because of structures and patterns, specifically the writing patterns of the author J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. This mathematical practice standard MP#7 calls for students to “look closely to discern a pattern or structure,” and noticing a pattern was exactly what a computer program did in unmasking Rowling as the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. The mystery novel, had been published under the name Robert Gailbraith, and the novel had begun to generate some critical acclaim. Only there was no Robert Gailbraith; Gailbraith was the pseudonym Rowling had chosen for her new foray into the mystery genre.

The ruse did not last long. In true detective fashion, two university professors, acting on a anonymous tip, wrote a computer code that used algorithms to compare patterns in the writing from The Cuckoo’s Calling with titles from Rowling’s Harry Potter series and the works of other mystery writers. The algorithms targeted several possible mystery writers, but Rowling’s name came up most consistently with language patterns that matched word length, 100 most common words, pairs of words, and the patterns of letters, spaces and grammatical marks known as “four character strings.”

The methods of the professors investigating Rowling belong to a practice known as the digital humanities, a field of study that “aims at developing and using the digital resources and tools for solving the research questions in the Humanities.”— Takafumi Suzuki (For other definitions check out whatisdigitalhumanities.com)

As texts become available digitally, they can be deconstructed into parts in order to answer research questions such as word origins (etymology), locating primary sources, and determining authorship. In the journal A Companion to Digital Humanities an article titled “Stylistic Analysis and Authorship Studies” author Hugh Craig points out that,

“There are enough successes to suggest that computational stylistics and non-traditional attribution have become essential tools, the first places one looks to for answers on very large questions of text patterning, and on difficult authorship problems.”

Yet, these patterns can do more than identify authorship. Patterns can be used to support an author’s purpose. For example, in the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, the character Marc Anthony, a wily politician, deepens the character Brutus’s involvement with the murder of Julius Caesar through the use of the phrase “honorable.” Here, the actor Marlon Brando plays Marc Anthony and recites the speech (1951 film):

The famous speech begins “Friends, Romans, Countrymen; Lend me your ears..” (3.2.) and Shakespeare employs the rhetorical device, an antistrophe or repetition of the same word phrase at the end of successive clauses, repeating “that Brutus is an honorable man.” In the opening 30 lines of the speech, Marc Anthony also connects “ambition” with the death of Julius Caesar. Four times, Marc Anthony refers to Brutus “an honorable man,” but links each mention of honor with an “ambitious man”. By the end of his oration, Marc Anthony’s rhetorical accusations have inferred Brutus’s less than honorable behavior was an ambitious grab for power, and an incensed mob storms the streets of Rome seeking revenge. A final analysis reveals that Shakespeare’s use of rhetoric, a textual pattern, provided the tool that Marc Anthony used to attack Brutus very publicly for political gain.

Employing a pattern of repetition can serve an author’s purpose, and understanding this purpose requires the stylistic analysis that is embedded in the English Language Arts Literacy Reading Standard 4 where students “interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.” Patterns reveal the author’s craft; patterns also reveal author’s purpose.

You can find a textual pattern in any one of seven basic sentence types. You can find a textual pattern on any one of the seven days of the week on any one of the seven continents. Using Mathematical Practice Standard #7, helps find the purpose of a text or find the author of a text…like J.K. Rowling, who wrote seven books in the Harry Potter series. Coincidence? No. Pattern.